


Coma

by hawkflyer667



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil only a bit, Coma, Hallucinations, M/M, crazy carlos, post-night vale fic, what if it was all just a dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 05:18:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkflyer667/pseuds/hawkflyer667
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if everything you took as truth turned out to be some strange, crazy dream? Could you trust yourself enough to fight the words of doctors and scientists? Trust in the love you know you shared?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coma

**Author's Note:**

> Forced by pushy best friend to post this. Somewhat unedited.

He saw him in the corner of his eye, once. Just—fleetingly, like the image was reflected onto the side of a shop window, as if a phantom was walking next to him, holding his hand. 

But that couldn’t be right, so he shook his head and ignored it, turning back to the monotonous clothes and various supplies one could get economy sized at Ocean State Job Lot. Because, here in the “ocean state”, or at least a state containing a body of water bigger than a puddle on in the middle of Mission Grove---

No. He wouldn’t do it. He was doing better. Everyone /said/ he was doing better. The homesickness ( _phantom_ homesickness) was almost gone. He would… survive past the heartbreak. He had a statistically better chance of surviving here than he ever would in N—there. He had a higher chance of surviving here than he ever would in the world of his dreams. 

So he moved on. Bought cheap things in economy sized packages because the need for individualism was completely and utterly gone, along with all sense of creativity and inspiration. 

He couldn’t go back, they had been very clear. Hallucinogens in the water triggered it, possibly. Or something equally as dangerous. They wouldn’t listen to his findings. Even if he wasn’t—they wouldn’t say the word outright, but he knew what they were all thinking. _Crazy._

Even if he wasn’t crazy, even the dream scientists wouldn’t renew his funding. Two years. That’s what he had. That had always been his time limit, in there or in the real world. He didn’t really consider two years being short until the last few months came. When the letter came, sealed in its tight envelope with a postage that was not from—there.

He had to go back and proclaim his findings. He – he had said only a few days. A week at most. And then he’d be on the next plane…h-

Home.

The funding was all a lie, wasn’t it? They had – the doctors had done tests and found lingering traces of high chemicals in his bloodstream. Something in the water, some powerful drug that allowed him to dream up everything of the last two years. Allowed him to stumble around in a trancelike state. All his memories were not real. The letter that brought him home? A signal from his subconscious.

The wonderful things he encountered? A figment of his imagination, no more. The way—the way things seemed to float. The Faceless Old—

No.

No. He was doing so well. He was nearly at the point where he didn’t think of it anymore, would keep moving forward until—

Until something shifted in the corner of his eyes and he knew it was him.

The one part of his trip to – that couldn’t possibly have been a hallucination. Couldn’t possibly have been make believe. Even if they tried to say that he was stuck in a government hospital—had tripped two months into his trip to there and hit his head and been in a coma for all of that time. Even if they had tried to distance himself from everyone he cared about.

Because that—that – he couldn’t have been a figment of his imagination. He was too real. Those – the times they shared together, just the two of them—it couldn’t have been false.

Could it?

They had him under constant surveillance. According to the Doctors, it was because it was normal to be disoriented and confused after coming out of a coma, especially when there was no one to go to. They had wanted him to stay at the hospital.

He had to go. Get away from their lies.

He wasn’t sure what government they were working for—the American one or the N- the other, shadowy, potentially-evil City Council. It didn’t matter. 

He knew he wasn’t crazy. 

It was too real. His dreams were too real. At night it was as if he had never left, as if he was waking up into the arms of everyone he had lost. He would get a slice of pizza, in his dreams. He would go to the station, in his dreams. Study the trees and the plants and even go do a few rounds of bowling, in his dreams. Because why the hell not?

They had told him that his dreams were the leftover bit of hallucinogen pounding through his system, but he didn’t believe them. They were too strong for that. He was a scientist, he wouldn’t be fooled by any doctors who couldn’t spin a decent lie.

Except for when the hazy figure came back. Danced around his head. For all of his dreams were missing something—they contained places and people, so nothing should be gone. But something was. It was this mysterious male figure, the one with the strange, indistinct body that would flicker in and out of his waking memory. 

The figure had three eyes, which couldn’t be right. Possibly more than four limbs. But when it beckoned, all he wanted to do was come. 

And it was that figure that kept him fighting the drugs the hospital gave him to forget, to move on. It was that figure that he kept returning to. The figure- unreal, for his hand could filter through it- that haunted his waking memories.

He didn’t know who it was. What it was. 

But all he knew was that it wanted him back.

And that its name was _Cecil_.


End file.
